UC Santa Cruz’s Seth Rubin gets cancer research grant

Professor Seth Rubin one of 19 to get grant from Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation

By
Jondi Gumz, Santa Cruz Sentinel

Monday, July 17, 2017

SANTA CRUZ >> A chemistry professor at UC Santa Cruz who has been studying how cancer develops and what might stop it has won a two-year $250,000 grant to pursue an out-of-the-box idea on childhood cancers.

Two years ago, he got a three-year $350,000 grant funded by the federal Department of Defense, researching retinoblastoma protein, which tells cells to stop multiplying.

When someone has cancer, that protein doesn’t work.

Rubin’s idea was to test compounds for their effect on retinoblastoma protein, looking for a new drug to treat breast cancer.

Working on that project, he had another idea: What if there were a way to get rid of cells that multiply too much?

He used an analogy to describe the concept.

“The cell has a natural garbage can,” he said. “Trick the cell into sorting proteins that are too active and sort them into the garbage can — that’s our challenge.”

The cell decides which proteins to be thrown out by tagging them, so Rubin wants to get access to the tagging system and tag the overactive proteins known as oncogenes.

“You can do that if you bring the oncogenes in contact with the cell sorting system,” he said.

He thinks this tactic could work for retinoblastoma, a cancer in young children that starts in the eye when cells over-multiply and form a tumor, and leukemia, where the blood or bone marrow produce too many white cells.

Rubin said the grant from Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, named for a girl who battled neuroblastoma until age 8, is “seed money,” giving him resources to do research and gather data that is needed to land a federal grant.

Rubin came to UCSC 10 years ago after a postdoctoral fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. As a Pew scholar, one of 20 funded in biomedical sciences in 2008, Rubin was awarded $240,000 to support his research on the molecular mechanisms involved in the development of cancer.

To support the Santa Cruz Cancer Benefit Group, attend the Grazing on the Green 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 7 at Aptos Village Park. Tickets are $55 before Aug. 24 at sccbg.org/gourmetgrazingonthegreen.